Religion

Even Muslim teen girls who don’t wear religious clothing have to deal with Islamophobia. One teen used to spend hours arguing with people until “I gradually realized that people are going to be ignorant no matter what.”

In multiculturalist Canada, which faces federal elections next month, Muslim women and the ban on wearing a face veil during citizenship ceremonies are in the vortex of political controversy. The courts declared the niqab ban unlawful; those for the ban are fighting on.

Does it really matter Yes, because we are all subject to a medieval theology of women on which Catholic Church leaders, including Pope Francis, base their promotion of public policies that compromise women’s health and lives around the world.

Amani al-Khatahtbeh, a veiled, Muslim, feminist, started her own online publication when she was in high school in New Jersey. “The most important thing for the movement,” she says, “is to take a step back and empower women to speak for themselves.”

Pope Francis leaves his pro-family, anti-poverty message echoing in the Philippines, where poor families forgo artificial birth control and migrant workers feel compelled to leave their homes and travel overseas into the hands of powerful employers.

Religious faith and pornography should never have gotten intertwined in my mind. But something bad that happened last summer has made me consider the unsavory links between patriarchy in its “holy” and egregiously unholy forms.

For generations France made little effort to include newcomers from its former colonies in North Africa, say critics. Now, two recent bans against religious veiling put French Muslim girls and women at the center of the country’s simmering immigration debate.

Tired of the polarizing effects of wearing the hijab after a 2004 ban and two more that followed, Muslim women in France are struggling to cope with a scarcity of social acceptance. Among the dozen women interviewed, some are thinking of leaving for good.

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It is being hailed as the most progressive state policy so far, going further than New Jersey, California and Rhode Island in various respects. But its showcase potential won’t be tested until the program gets going in 2018.